Global fully coupled climate-aerosol CMA-CPSv4: aerosol simulation performance

Abstract. This study provides a comprehensive description of the China Meteorological Administration Climate Prediction System version 4 (CMA-CPSv4), which is developed based on the fully coupled global climate-aerosol Beijing Climate Center Earth System Model (BCC-ESM1). It is updated from its previous version, CMA-CPSv3, which was based on the high-resolution Beijing Climate Center Climate System Model version 2 (BCC-CSM2-HR). In contrast to CMA-CPSv3, CMA-CPSv4 is capable of simulating the dynamic evolution of aerosols and their feedback on the climate system. This study aims to evaluate the reproducibility of atmospheric aerosols in CMA-CPSv4 under the forcing of observed atmospheric circulation. The 20-year simulations for the period 2001–2020 are conducted. The results show that CMA-CPSv4 reasonably captures the global spatial distribution and temporal variations in mass concentrations for five categories of dust, sea salt, sulfates, organic carbon, and black carbon, as well as aerosol optical depth (AOD). In East Asia, simulated fine-mode particulate matter PM_2.5 concentrations are in good agreement with the CMIP6 multi-model ensemble mean (MME), although dust concentrations over the Taklamakan–Mongolia–North China regions are slightly underestimated, and sulfate concentrations are overestimated over the oceans. In addition, several severe dust pollution events in northern China are successfully reproduced, demonstrating the capability of CMA-CPSv4 to simulate aerosol concentrations and extreme events. The reasonable simulation of aerosol distribution is fundamental for studying aerosol-climate interactions and the impact of aerosols on numerical weather and climate prediction in our future work.